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went out and the police car which had been waiting for him took him back to Edinburgh. We talked in hushed voices for the rest of the afternoon. We felt that we had somehow been touched by greatness, and we were very grateful. It was almost as if Lord Clark himself had been there.

Almost, but not quite.”

Chris had now stopped, and Pat was silent. She looked at him, at the shadow on his face from the curious overhead lighting.

She felt strangely moved by the story of this visit, and she wanted to say something to him, but she could not decide what it was that she had in mind. How strange the visit must have been; rather like the visit she had read about in an Italian short story that her father had drawn to her attention. An immensely aris-tocratic count visits an archaeological side with his aides and Humiliation and Embarrassment

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speaks in a voice so distinguished that nobody can understand a word of what he was saying. Beh andiatah reh ec brar . . . and so on. But in spite of the fact that nobody could understand, they were all impressed with the visitor and felt honoured that he had condescended to be there. This is how they must have felt on that day at Tulliallan.

She stared at Chris, who looked back at her in silence. For a moment a smile played about his lips, and then he looked down at his glass of beer.

“I heard what you said about me,” he said quietly. “This isn’t going to work, is it?”

Pat said nothing. She was mortified that he had heard her unkind comments, and now she began to stutter an apology.

“I didn’t mean it to sound like that,” she said. “You know how sometimes people say things that get on your nerves, for no real reason at all. It happens to all of us.”

“Except that in this case there is a reason,” said Chris, his voice level and controlled. “I’m a bit of a joke to you, aren’t I, because I don’t fit in with your world. I just can’t. Every single person I’ve met in this art job – every single one – has condescended to me. Oh they’re nice enough, particularly if they need me to do something, but that’s about it. This is a city of snobs, that’s what it is. A city of utter snobs. And this place here is full of them. Wall to wall.”

46. Humiliation and Embarrassment

Pat did not stay long at the Hot Cool after Chris had made his self-pitying declaration. It had not surprised her that he had been offended by her dismissal of him – any dismissal was offensive to the one on the receiving end – but there was something uncomfortable about the way in which he had included her in his blanket condemnation of the Edinburgh art world. She realised that he must have imagined her to be part of that world 118

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– and she was part of that world, in a very attenuated sense –

but he had no right to make such sweeping statements about the attitudes of other people. How did he know anything about her views, other than that she did not think that there was much chance of developing a relationship with him, and this on the grounds of her objection to the use of the expression hah, hah?

Anybody might object to that, just as they might object to any overused phrase, and it seemed quite unreasonable for him to accuse her – and so many others – of being snobbish. It was not snobbish, she thought, to object to those who said hah, hah. That was an entirely personal reaction, and we were entitled, surely, to personal reactions to a mannerism. We did not have to like the way other people walked, or talked, or the way they drank their coffee or combed their hair. Or did we have to like everything?

Was it inclusive to like everything?

They had parted in a civil fashion. After a small amount of rather stiff conversation, Chris had looked at his watch and remembered another commitment, just seconds before Pat had been planning to recover from a similar lapse of memory.

“Maybe we’ll meet again,” he had said, looking dubiously around at the decor of the wine bar and at the other customers.

“You never know.”

“Maybe,” said Pat. “And I’m really sorry if I offended you. I really am . . .”

He raised a hand. “Water under the bridge. Don’t worry. It’s just that this place gets me down from time to time. It’s not your fault. Maybe I should go back to Falkirk.”

“You can’t go back to Falkirk,” said Pat. She said this and then stopped: it sounded as if she was expressing a major truth about life, and about Falkirk, which was not the case.

Chris looked at her quizzically. “Why not?”

“Well, maybe you can. Maybe Falkirk’s all right to go back to, if you come from there to begin with, if you see what I mean. What I wanted to say was that in general, in life, you can’t go back.”

He looked at his watch. “I actually do have to see somebody,”

he said. “I really must go.”

After Chris had gone, Pat stood by herself at the bar for a

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short while. The barman, who had observed the scene, came over towards her, casually wiping the bar with a cloth.

“Chris gone?” he asked.